Long Beach Rental Assistance
The State of California has not extended the application window for rental assistance due to COVID-19 hardships. The city’s window to apply for aid closed March 30. As of Wednesday, a final 964 initially-approved cases are awaiting final approval for payment, according to the city. And, so far, 6,550 of the 15,904 total applicants who submitted a complete application have received city relief payments.
By the end of the program, about 7,000 tenants and landlords in Long Beach will have received $56.7 million in rental relief funds, which the city received from the Federal Government and the State of California.
With extensions on the COVID-19 Tenant Relief Act, tenants who amassed rent debt between March 2020 and the end of September 2021 can’t be evicted due to that debt as long as they submitted a pandemic-related hardship declaration and, in some cases, paid 25% of the rent.
Currently, tenants who have a pending rental assistance case are protected from eviction. Long Beach also falls under Los Angeles County’s COVID-19 Tenant Protections Resolution (formerly the Los Angeles County Eviction Moratorium). Starting July 1, tenants struggling to pay rent will be protected from eviction if they are below 80% of area median income and demonstrate suffering financial hardship due to COVID-19 and have applied for rental payment assistance.
More streams of relief funds might come Long Beach’s way. The funds might likely come from the U.S. Treasury’s recaptured funds or California’s new forgivable loan program for cities with Emergency Rental Assistance programs, according to the Development Services office. The city is applying for up to $28 million in additional rent-relief funding that would go to those households who already had completed applications in the city’s system before the March 30 cutoff date. The money would come in the form of a loan from the state that would either be paid back with recaptured Treasury funds or be forgiven by the state.
